A Triple-A title taking Web3 gaming into the future
Illuvium is an open-world fantasy RPG where players can battle and capture creatures known as Illuivials. Developers have been building the game for a long time and the Web3 community views the project as a big step on the pathway to mass adoption. Now, with the release of its private beta Overworld, it’s a time to take a look at the game find out how it works.
Contents
- What is Illuvium?
- How to get started in the game
- How to play and win Illuvium
- What makes the game innovative?
- What’s on the Illuvium roadmap?
- Useful Links
Fans have waited for few games as excitedly as they’ve waited for Illuvium. The title has been in the pipeline for quite a while now and from the rare glimpses we’ve caught, it looks as though it will be worth the wait.
What is Illuivum?
Built on Immutable X, the Ethereum scaling protocol, Illuvium is a 3D open world which players can explore and also actively shape. The Illuvium decentralized autonomic organization (DAO) is developing the game.
The game is mostly based around searching for and capturing strange beasts called Illuvials. Players can use the gathered Illuvials for fighting against other players’ creatures. At the same time, players earn rewards for their success in battle.
Illuvium consists of multiple games in the ecosystem:
- Illuvium Overworld – The best known element from the Illuvium ecosystem, would be Illuvium Overworld. Here players can explore alien landscapes, capture Illuvials (magnificent beasts), mine resources, harvest exotic plants, and help their crash-landed crew thrive. The game allows players to upgrade their Illuvials, mine valuable resources, and forge powerful weapons and equipment.
- Illuvium Arena – Illuvium Arena is an autobattle game where players curate their best teams, challenge opponents, and outsmart the competition. It features different game modes such as Survival, Ascendant, and Leviathan, each offering unique challenges and opportunities for players to showcase their skills.
- Illuvium Zero – Illuvium Zero is a strategy and city management game. Players can build, upgrade, and manage their digital industrial complex. Players can also find biodata, create blueprints, extract scarce resources, and earn from their land ownership within the game.
The game is built in Unreal Engine 5, the gold standard for gaming graphics. It’s especially good at rendering heavily detailed environments, characters, and other items in a dynamic ecosystem.
How to get started in the game
To start playing the Overworld public today, go to the Illuvium site and start click on Register For Beta or Explore Overworld. You’ll get the opportunity to sign up to play and, once there is an open spot, you’ll be given access to the game.
Once Illuvium notifies you that you can play, follow the simple instructions and you’ll be capturing and battling Illuvials. The game is open to both Mac and Windows users. You will need an Immutable X-enabled wallet to play Illuvium.
How to play and win Illuvium
Illuvium starts in the free-to-play mode in the Tier 0 world areas, where players can familiarize themselves with the gameplay. However, to start collecting Illuvium NFTs from higher-tiered regions, the player has to opt for the paid version.
The game places the player in the aftermath of a spaceship crash on an alien world with extreme and erratic weather, diverse scenery, and odd creatures. Once they’ve landed, players need to explore this world, capture creatures, and uncover obelisks to speed up their travel across the map. Players customize their protagonist character to their specific tastes.
There are over 100 different types of Illuvial roaming the vast world of Illuvium. The game makers have categorized them into one of several classes with different affinities and abilities. Players can combine their fighting beasts to get better odds during battle, or they canfuse three fully-leveled Illuvials into a single, mightier unit.
The characters
The five classes are Guardian, Fighter, Rogue, Psion, and Empath. There are also five affinities: Water, Earth, Fire, Air, and Nature (e.g. Earth Psion). Additionally, up to two affinities can be stacked and combined for power-ups. Player’s hold their caught Illuvial NFTs on the blockchain in their crypto wallets. Within the game, they store their characters in Shards. Shards differ in strength and stronger ones are able to to support more powerful Illuvials.
The battlegrounds
Illuvium battles take place in the Ranked Arena and the Leviathan Arena. The player can enter a matchmaking queue in the former after capturing an Illuvial they want to use. In the latter, players can challenge each other and spectators can bet on the winner.
Fighting takes place in an auto-battler mode, which means that players can’t manually control their Illuvials as they fight. They can only select the character, its weapons, and armor before the battle starts and this is the only way to try and affect the success of the battle.
Besides the Illuvium game, players will be able to join Illuvium: Zero, where they can build their own industrial complex and have it interact with the base Illuvium game. To create this complex, the players will need to farm resources on their land.
What makes the game innovative?
Illuvium differentiates itself from competing dapps by offering high-quality, evolving NFTs with a focus on gameplay and the play-to-earn model. It combines elements of classic RPG collection games with battle techniques popularized by the Auto Battler genre. Additionally, it provides zero gas fees and sub-second transaction speeds through its integration with the ImmutableX layer-two solution.
Tokens
The Illuvium game features two ERC-20 tokens:
- ILV (Illuvium) allows players to engage in yield farming, staking, and Illuvium DAO governance.
- sILV helps run the game and can only be spent on in-game purchases.
Users receive rewards in either ILV or sILV. People taking their rewards in ILV will need to wait for a one-year lock up period to pass before getting their tokens. This is so Illivium can ensure high liquidity for trading pairs between ILV and other coins. Players who choose their rewards in sILV will receive them immediately.
NFT characters
Illuvials and other in-game items (weapons, armor, etc.) are represented as Illuvium NFTs on Immutable X and hold real-world value. As with most NFTs, the more powerful, rare and desirable an Illuvial is, the more ILV it is worth. Minted by the Illuvium DAO, the game also features a collection of promotional and cosmetic NFTs that include the Cosplay and Genesis Promo sets, to mark the beginning of Illuvium’s journey.
Take a look at Illuvium Beyond to see these NFT characters.
Where to buy Illuvium game items, NFT assets and tokens?
The marketplace to trade Illuvium items is the IlluviDex, which is the official market exchange within the game. Players can use blueprints obtained from their Illuvium Land to craft and trade items on the IlluviDex.
The native ILV token can be found on various exchange, and decentralized exchanges such as SushiSwap and Uniswap.
What’s on the Illuvium roadmap?
As one of the first true Triple-A Web3 video games, expectations for Illuvium are high. Judging by its roadmap, the team has been hard at work since they began the project and they’ve already completed several important steps.
These include the prototype development, Unreal Engine transition, token smart contract creation, first cinematic trailer, and V1 and V2 of yield farm contracts.
The Illuvium team has a roadmap that includes the launch of Illuvium Overworld, Illuvium Arena, and Illuvium Zero. They continue to develop new games within the Illuvium universe and plan to introduce features such as land renting, mega-city formation, and Obelisk travel.
Useful Links
Carry your Web3 journey with you
With the DappRadar mobile app, never miss out on Web3 again. See the performance of the most popular dapps, and keep an eye on the NFTs in your portfolio. Your DappRadar account syncs with our mobile app, giving you soon the option to receive alerts live as they happen.
